I ask myself why it is that I never realized color photography existed before the 1960s. Why are all the photos and things I ever saw from before I
was born nearly always in black and white? Here we see some photographer exactly 100 years ago traipsing across rural Russia and the extended steppes
and mountains of its empire pre-Bolshevik revolution. It's amazing to see the color of the different people who called these places home. The Jewish
teacher with students, the Emirs, the nomads; the white, yellow and mixed peoples...it's insanity that most people don't even have a blip in their
minds about this place called Central Asia and the intricacies of it.

Why are we not using these old photographs to teach history and make it more accessible to modern students. We're talking peoples and histories that
directly and indirectly mesh and influence the history of the Middle East and Afghanistan. How useful would this be from an anthropological
perspective and why is it not more common to stumble upon?

EDIT: I finally realized how to star and flag yesterday, so now I made this officially my first "S&F" as it's called.

I was about 12 years old when I visited the French WW2 museum and they had a screen showing pictures of D-Day in color. I'll never forget that day.
It was the day I realised that history really means something tangible, that these things really did happen, in color, to real persons.

Reading your thread has brought me back to that feeling. Star and Flag for that. You've just brought an end to a long summer in which I asked myself
why I ever go a degree in history in the first place! Thanks for that.

Isn't it stunning? Those were real people, people like me and you. 100 years gone. Everything and nothing at all changed.

It's hard to believe these were actually taken one hundred years ago. The color, quality, and resolution of these photos suggests they were taken
much more recent.

I'm not challenging their validity as I have no evidence to back up such a claim, nor am I claiming to be a photography expert, but just taking a
look at the larger photos on the link provided makes me believe they are more recent photographs.

Nonetheless, they are incredible pictures, especially if they were taken at the time they claim to have been taken.

Originally posted by NovusOrdoMundi
It's hard to believe these were actually taken one hundred years ago. The color, quality, and resolution of these photos suggests they were taken
much more recent.

I'm not challenging their validity as I have no evidence to back up such a claim, nor am I claiming to be a photography expert, but just taking a
look at the larger photos on the link provided makes me believe they are more recent photographs.

Nonetheless, they are incredible pictures, especially if they were taken at the time they claim to have been taken.

Photographic plates fell out of use completely - only relatively recently. Because of the
HUGE surface area and analogue resolution, that stuff is really hard to beat. There were a few common formats but any of them was HUMONGOUS compared
to the later 35mm film and to all digital sensors thereafter.

Really doesn't surprise me that the pics came out OK. I had a plate camera once and it was a work of art.

I trust your analysis of it. It seems you know more about it than I do. It's just hard to believe, that's all. The color and quality looks like
something I would expect in a photo taken in the 1980's. It's incredible that the same technology existed 70 years prior.

Here's a site I forgot about, but this thread reminded me of. It's worldwaronecolorphotos.com.
These were taken with colour film and not done in the same method as the ones shown in the OP. So the colour isn't as vivid, but they're still neat
I think.

Truly amazing! If you look close at the city shots, you'll see no garbage strewn about. I thought they were being clean until I saw the water
carrier; they didn't have anything to throw away. Every thing was used.
Something else, everyone in those pictures is dead, a little morbid but something that I find fascinating.

I have always wondered what my life would have been like if I were born in a different century. Hard to believe that not too long ago those people
were not even traveling via vehicle or plane whilst getting directions via navigation app through an Ipad. Crazy times they lived in hehe. Just
imagine 100 years from now!

Thanks for bringing that to the attention of the viewers of this thread, it's really appreciated! But I can't find any of the pictures in your link
in the OP, so I guess they're new to these forums. But thanks for digging that nice thread up for us

Originally posted by buddhasystem
The Bayer filter commonly used in digital cameras is based roughly on same principle.

So the technology spiral made a complete turn...

Right --

Many people don't seem to realize that the "image sensor" (CCD or CMOS) of ALL digital cameras (NASA's and the one you own) are essentially
color blind -- that is consumer digital cameras can only "really" see light in shades of gray.

It's takes filters such as the bayer filter found in most consumer digital cameras to create the different shades of gray, plus a computer to "make
an educated guess" at what color is being represented by those shades of gray.

As pointed out earlier, the photographer in the OP used a similar method -- he used black-and-white film and filters to create the shades of gray, and
used projection through color transparencies to recreate the color represented by the shade of gray.

It's a clever method of getting approximate color from black-and-white film -- or in the case of digital photography, getting color from a
black-and-white image sensor.

As wonderful as these pictures are, I believe they could be made even better. A person with access to the original color-separated bw images could
apply modern digital techniques to compensate for movement of individual persons, as well as image distortion near the edges. The artists' original
intention was photographic perfection, so helping them achieve it posthumously should offend no one.

The Above Top Secret Web site is a wholly owned social content community of The Above Network, LLC.

This content community relies on user-generated content from our member contributors. The opinions of our members are not those of site ownership who maintains strict editorial agnosticism and simply provides a collaborative venue for free expression.